Environmentalism under Authoritarian Regimes. Myth, Propaganda, Reality

0503170 - ÚSD 2019 RIV GB eng M - Část monografie knihy
Janáč, Jiří
Planned Environment in a Socialist Dictatorship. Complex Water Management and Soil Improvement in Moravia.
Environmentalism under Authoritarian Regimes. Myth, Propaganda, Reality. London: Routledge, 2018 - (Brain, S.; Pál, V.), s. 125-144. Routledge Environmental Humanities. ISBN 9781351007054
Grant CEP: GA ČR(CZ) GJ18-05095Y
Institucionální podpora: RVO:68378114
Klíčová slova: environment * authoritarianism * planning
Obor OECD: History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)

The paper looks at the nexus of power and environmental discources through the lens of the major water managemnt project undertaken by the Czechoslovak communist governemnt in 1970s and 1980s: The Complex Water Management and Soil Improvement Scheme for Southern Moravia. From the start, the plan, driven by economic concerns (large-scale irrigation, control of water regime of the Dyje/Thaia River), had been attacked from an ecological perspective as possibly harmful to the natural environment (Ochrana přírody 1963). In the end, the ecological critique of the hazardous undertaking gave way to the priority of the argument of economic benefits. Yet the ecological perspective successfully influenced the designing of the entire scheme, in what has been described as a uniquely broad and fierce debate between experts coming from different disciplines (HETEŠA and MARVAN 1984). Ultimately, the scheme was heralded as the most significant landscape engineering undertaking in Central Europe, developed „in harmony with both the long-term plan of the country's national economic development and the principles of ecology, while duly respecting the ecosystems as well as the integrity and conservation of the environment” (VANÍČEK and HRABAL 1974). This, however, did not mark the end of the debate. The scheme (especially the system of the three Nové Mlýny dams central to the project) has been subjected to continuous scrutiny and revaluation by experts from various scientific disciplines, state agencies and various public initiatives throughout its construction period. By late 1980s it achieved the status of one of the most vivid examples of the „communist ecocide“ in Czechoslovakia.
Trvalý link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0294983